as he fits it to the inside of that door. I had two visitors last night, one invited and one very much uninvited. You’d think this was Flinders Street Station.’
‘Yes, Miss. While he’s about it he can fit one to my door, too. I don’t feel safe here.’
‘Neither do I. You can put this poker back with the fire irons, Dot, and find my Beretta. I want some bargaining power with the next intruder. By the way, Dot, did you put that urn on my dressing-table?’
‘No, Miss, of course not.’
‘Not only a bolt,’ decided Phryne, ‘but a new lock with a key as well. And find that gun, too. I’m going to have my bath.’
Dot, who did not approve of guns, laid out Phryne’s clothes for a trip to the caves: black velvet trousers, handmade English hiking boots, a silk shirt and a loose woolly jumper knitted of many colours, with ducks and drakes across the front, before she rummaged for the little gun and the box of shells.
Phryne bathed in the bathroom down the hall, a shameless room with a Dutch water-closet on a dais like a throne, a bathtub big enough to wash a variety chorus, and blue and white willow-pattern tiles on the walls. The floor was of pink marble, chilly to the bare feet, but the water was plentiful and hot.
As her employer dressed, Dot removed the urn and returned it to its proper place. It belonged, she was told, in a niche in the great stair.
By the time she was descending the monumental staircase, Phryne felt human again. The memory of Gerald’s mouth warmed her all through. A well-skilled young man, definitely worth the effort.
Breakfast was, as always, lavish. Several people were missing. Jack Lucas, Miss Fletcher, Mrs Luttrell and Gerald Randall, it appeared, were either breakfasting in decent privacy or had already been and gone. Tom Reynolds and the poet sat together at the big table. Tom looked rough. Phryne poured herself some tea and took a poached egg and some bacon, home-cured and delicious. Tom was staring at a piece of dry toast as though it was a personal enemy.
‘The nasty effects of a hangover,’ said Phryne judicially, ‘are produced by dehydration. Isn’t that right, Doctor Franklin?’
‘Yes, indeed, Miss Fisher,’ replied the Doctor. ‘If I was prescribing for you, Tom, I’d order a gallon of barley water and bed-rest.’
‘Bed-rest?’ Tom barked a laugh which must have hurt his head. ‘Can’t rest. Can’t sleep.’
‘Then drink your tea, have another cup and a few sips of that nice lemonade which Mrs Croft has made for you, and I’ll give you some pills for tonight that I guarantee will put an elephant to sleep,’ said the Doctor. Tom did not precisely brighten, but he did not dull any further. He drank the tea and allowed the poet to refill his cup.
‘How do we get to the caves?’ asked Phryne. Tom blinked at her.
‘We’ll harness up the big dray. The track’s all right that way. We just can’t go back to the Bairnsdale road because it’s still under water.’
Phryne needed to get Tom Reynolds alone, to tell him that Lina had gone out into the night to meet someone called R, but the poet, clearly concerned, was tending his hungover host like a mother.
Phryne sauntered out into the grounds alone to reconnoitre.
She was down by the boathouse when she heard splashing. Surely no one was swimming in that river. It was in spate. Phryne ran to the bank and saw a hand grasping for the remains of the launching ramp. She knelt, grabbed, and hauled with all her strength. Judith Fletcher’s red face appeared, followed by the rest of her. She was considerably bruised and more wet than she had been since she’d been born.
‘Gosh,’ gasped the young woman, wiping her hair out of her eyes. ‘Golly, that current’s strong!’ She staggered and sat down on the grass, as red as her swimming costume.
Phryne exclaimed, ‘What possessed you to go swimming in that?’ She indicated the torrent of grey water foaming past at the speed of a racing horse.
‘There’s a little sandy bay back there,’ panted Miss Fletcher. ‘Out of the tide. I thought it’d be safe, it looked calm enough. But the undercurrent snatched my feet out from under me and the next thing I knew I was drowning. I suppose I ought to thank you,’ she added resentfully.
‘It might be polite,’ said Phryne.
‘It wouldn’t matter,’ Miss Fletcher broke out suddenly. ‘It wouldn’t matter if I was dead.’
‘Wouldn’t it?’
‘I always say the wrong thing and Mother always disapproves of me and I’m sick of this. I’m wasting my life at house parties, trailed around like a slave on a chain to be bid for by bored boys.’
Phryne sat down on the bank and produced her cigarette case. Miss Fletcher had thrown herself face down on the grass and was tearing up handfuls of sedge with her fingers.
‘Then why keep doing it?’
‘I’m an heiress,’ wailed Judith.
‘Yes, so am I.’ This shocked the girl enough to make her look up at the composed figure perched on the bank, smoking a gasper.
‘You are? Why didn’t they marry you to someone, then? Or did they?’
‘They didn’t because I refused to play. They can’t make you marry, you know. They can’t really do anything to you. I ran away to Paris when I was eighteen. How old are you?’
‘Eighteen,’ murmured Miss Fletcher. She sat up cross-legged on the green riverbank.
‘Is it your money?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is, though Mother takes a lot of it to run the house and buy me clothes and all that. The old man left it all to me.’
‘Have you a trustee?’
‘Yes. Nice old bird but Mother never lets me have him to myself.’
‘What do you really want to do? Marry Gerry Randall? He’s a nice boy.’
‘Yes, he’s nice. But I don’t really know yet. He’s dreamy, is Gerry, lazy. But very handsome.’
‘Yes, very,’ said Phryne, visited by a reminiscent vision of the naked young man with the curly hair.
‘But what I’d really like to do is have a little farm somewhere and breed horses. I’d have my chums to visit and then I could shut the door on all of them, light my fire, sit down in my chair and listen to the silence.’
‘Then what you need to do, my dear,’ Phryne extended a hand and hauled Miss Fletcher to her feet, ‘is go and see your nice trustee and tell him that’s what you want to do. If he agrees, then all the mothers in the world won’t be able to stop you. Tell him that you’re tired of all these parties and if he doesn’t comply with your wishes you’ll marry a taxi-driver and fling all your worldly wealth away on gigolos. Tell your mother that, too. It might work. Has it occurred to you that she is actually living off your capital, and making your life a misery into the bargain? Now, get back to the house before you freeze, Miss Fletcher, and next time, think before you fling yourself into deep water.’
Judith Fletcher had the gaffed-cod look of soul’s awakening on her round face. She goggled at Phryne for fully a minute before she lowered her head and ran for the house, whipped along by a chill breeze.
The boathouse would do, Phryne ascertained a moment later. And not only had it stopped raining, but the sun looked like it was trying to come out.
The stableman had the heavy dray out and was backing a stout horse into the shafts as she came past.
‘’Ere, ’old ’im,’ he grunted, thrusting a leading rein into her hands. The piebald carthorse at the end of it was backing steadily away. He knew those shafts. At any moment they might spike him in the behind. They also meant that he would spend the next few hours dragging a heavy weight behind him instead of the leisurely day’s grazing he had planned.
‘Calm yourself,’ said Phryne to the horse, looking it in the eye and keeping a steady pressure on the rein. ‘No use kicking against the pricks, Dobbin dear. We all have our cart to drag and today you are for it.’
The horse, soothed by her voice, stepped a pace towards Phryne and allowed her to stroke his nose.
‘Good on yer, Miss, now back ’im in ’ere.’
Phryne walked Dobbin around in a tight circle, then stood in front of him and laid a hand on his chest. ‘Back, ho!’ she said. ‘Whoa back!’
Dobbin, uneasy, danced a little on hoofs the size of soup plates before stepping back between the shafts. Willis threaded the tug girths and Phryne caressed the fringed ears. Dobbin, once harnessed, appeared resigned to his fate. She handed over the rein to the ex-jockey and walked around the dray.
It was a huge, heavy, lumbering wagon, obviously designed for carrying tree trunks. It had been fitted with
